Space in a commercial kitchen is at a premium. Thus, it is desirable to use the vertical space by making ovens tall in relation to their width and/or depth. A tall oven, however, restricts the location and arrangement of its components.
One type of oven that may be vertically oriented is a barbecue oven. However, there are other ovens which are not used for barbeque cooking that can be vertically oriented. Barbecuing is a cooking process that typically involves the cooking of foods by exposing them to relatively low temperature smoke for a number of hours. The structure used for barbecuing typically includes a heating or fire chamber, a cooking chamber and a conduit or flue through which smoke and heated combustion gases are transported from the fire chamber to the cooking chamber. Smoke and heat is produced by burning a smoke producing substance in the fire chamber such as wood, which is periodically replenished, until cooking is completed. The fire chamber is traditionally located to the side of the cooking chamber because grease often drips from the food being cooked. If the grease contacts the burning fuel, it could ignite. Accessing the fire chamber from the side requires additional space on the side of the oven to allow a person access to the fire chamber and to permit room for the first chamber to open out to the side of the oven. Because space in a commercial kitchen is limited, this required additional space is a huge inconvenience.
The vertical orientation of the oven also causes inefficiency in heat transfer between the fire chamber and cooking chamber as the distance between the food in the cooking chamber and the source of fuel in the fire chamber is greater than in traditional, shorter ovens. Therefore, there exist a need for an oven that has an improved heat transfer capability between the fire chamber and the cooking chamber.